With one simple change, this mum-of-three slashed $5400 from her electricity bill.

Editor’s note: This is one woman’s experience, not financial advice.

Have you noticed your power bill creeping up? You’re not alone. In 2017, Australian households have seen an increase of up to 19 per cent in energy bills, adding a casual $300-400 onto your yearly total.

With the cost of utilities up there with the biggest concerns for families, one woman has shared the simple trick she used to cut her home’s electricity bills from $1800 to just $450 a quarter.

When Michelle Thompson-Laing and her family moved from a small duplex into a house with a granny flat in Sydney’s Northern Beaches, she was shocked to find out what the previous owners spent on electricity.

“I nearly had a heart attack when they told me they were averaging $1800 a quarter on electricity alone! I started to panic that we had bought some kind of energy black hole and promptly did some pretty serious tightening of our spending,” the mum-of-three wrote on her blog, Keep Calm and Get Organised.

That tightening included a trick most of us could easily implement in our homes this weekend – switching your down light globes.

“Our house was FULL of down lights. We have 25 in our kitchen and living room alone! All the lights were halogen down lights which produce heat and use huge amounts of power,” the budgeting expert said.

“Halogen lights use 75-80 per cent more electricity to run than LED down lights. There was an initial cost to change over all the lights (about $8-10 per globe) but the overall impact on our power bills was huge.”

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Aside from fitting her house with energy efficient down lights, Michelle also shopped around for cheaper energy providers, uses the washing machine and dishwasher in off peak times and opts for jumpers rather than cranking up the heater whenever humanely possible.

Oh, and she turns things off when they’re not being used, which always helps, right?

What energy saving tips do you use to keep your power bill down?

For more finance content, read:

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• The Barefoot Investor: “If you buy your child a brand new car, you’re an idiot.”
• How an Aussie mum feeds her entire family-of-eight each week for $25 a head.